Increased Steam Pressure and Temperature

Long Strokes and High Rotation Rates

It may seem counterintuitive that locomotives with smaller driving wheels should achieve higher efficiency than those with larger driving wheels, but it is a fact that high engine rotation rates offer a number of technalogical benefits.   It may also seem counterintuitive that long strokes (such as used on GWR 2-cylinder locos) also offer advantages […]

Read More

Improved Steam Tightness

Lack of steam tightness is usually imagined to be associated with steam leaking from pipe joints and piston rod glands resulting in the familiar leaks that can be seen as a white plume of steam eminating from wherever the leak is occurring.  Steam leakage of this sort is indeed wasteful and deletarious to a locomotive’s […]

Read More

Reduced Heat Losses

Page Under Development This page is still “under development”. Please contact the webmaster at info@advanced-steam.org if you would like to help by contributing text to this or any other page.’  

Read More

Kordina

The concept of the Kordina named after its inventor Zsigmond Kordina (see below), is described on page 153 of Wardale’s book “The Red Devil and Other Tales from the Age of Steam”, its function being to: “expand the release steam to low pressure and high velocity at the point where the exhaust flows from the […]

Read More

The “Economizer”

An “economizer” is a supplementary water heater consisting of the front part of the boiler which is partitioned off from the rear section by a thin steel plate baffle, closely-fitted inside and around (but not rigidly attached to) the boiler barrel, tubes and flues. Thus, the pressure on both sides of the baffle is the […]

Read More

Feedwater Heating

The temperature of feedwater entering the boiler should be as high as possible in order to maximize steam production and to minimize thermal stresses in the boiler structure Feedwater heating can be achieved in many ways. The “steam injectors” commonly used on First Generation locomotives provides a degree of preheating, however they only work at […]

Read More

Gas Producer Combustion System (GPCS)

The application of GPCS or “Gas Producer Combustion System” to locomotive fireboxes is explained in great detail in pages 78 to 92 of Dave Wardale’s book “The Red Devil and Other Tales from the Age of Steam“.  Basically it is a 19th century technology involving the blowing of oxygen over heated coal to make “Producer […]

Read More

“Second Generation Steam” – a Definition

The celebrated Argentinean steam locomotive engineer Livio Dante Porta devised a classification for steam locomotive development as summarized below: First Generation Steam (FGS) – practically all past locomotives; Second Generation Steam (SGS) – new designs incorporating the best proven modern steam locomotive technology; Third Generation Steam (TGS) – totally new formats requiring considerable research and […]

Read More